I once read a story about a retired baseball coach who spoke at a coaching convention. He had coached for decades and had retired recently, but he was the keynote speaker.

As he sauntered onto the stage the audience couldn't help but notice the full size home plate hanging from a string around his neck. It stayed there for the entire speech, but he never referenced it.

As he was closing, he finally mentioned it. He asked coaches at every level of the game, from t-ball to the major leagues, how wide home plate was.

For every single one of them, the answer was the same: 17 inches.

He asked the coaches, “if a pitcher can’t manage to get a strike across the plate, do we widen it? Do we change the rules?”

He went on to talk about how this was the problem with the home, education, church, and politics today. He kept talking about how we don’t teach accountability. We don’t teach consequences. We don’t hold people to standards.

When they fall short, we just widen the plate.

If we are unwilling to hold ourselves, our families, our teachers, our players, our churches, and our politicians to a higher standard, it’s no wonder we are seeing all the problems we are.

We need to hold ourselves to the highest possible standards, and don’t let anything keep us from achieving the goals that we’ve set for ourselves, and we’ll never get there if we keep widening the plate.

90% of the time that you will spend with your kids happens within their first 18 years of life.

Stop and think about that for a minute. If you have a six year old, that means that ⅓ of that time is gone. You can’t get it back. That time is over.

How much of that time have I spent doing things that didn’t matter? Or things that I didn’t even want to be doing?

I’ve got my own set of core values, and the very first one, the one that I place above all the others, is presence. Emotional presence, physical presence, whatever it takes. I don’t want my family to have a memory that I’m not in. I want my kids to be able to say “Dad was always there.”

Much like the bumpers in bowling keep you in the lane, core values keep you on track. They serve as the bumpers of your life to make sure that you stay moving towards where you want to be headed.

I am the worst at multitasking. I can only give so much of myself, and eventually I get tunnel vision. I get so focused on something that I can’t put it down.

We can’t only be present when things are going well, we have to be present emotionally, physically, spiritually when things aren’t going right.

Start living as if your days are numbered. I’m convinced that so many of us waste our time because we don’t realize that our days are numbered. We don’t realize that we have a finite amount of time here on earth, and we never get it back.

I’ve started practicing two things in my life to be more present:

1. When I come home, I turn my phone off for 30 minutes. Not just keep it in my pocket, but power it off and put it in another room.

2. I’ve started sitting in silence at the beginning of each day. Not as some mystical yoga thing, but just to spend some time with my own feelings and thoughts.

People who complain about their situation, or their circumstances, but have refused to do anything to change the place they’re in.

I can’t process stories about someone who is unwilling to take action to change their circumstances, because let’s face it, whining is easier than working. Griping is easier than grinding.

The majority of things in our lives are there because they’re things we’ve chosen to have.

As I was thinking about it this week, it got me stewing on what I believe are the 3 things you’re going to have to sacrifice in order to be successful, and they’re really simple.

1. Time

You’re going to have to sacrifice your time. You’re going to have to say no to things that are fun so that you can spend time chasing the dream that you have.

2. Freedom

You’re going to have to sacrifice your freedom. The freedom to sleep in late, the freedom to binge watch Netflix. Sacrifice the freedom of doing the things that you “want” to do in order to do the things that you “need” to do in order to chase your dream.

3. Pride

You’re going to have to sacrifice your pride. You’re going to have to be willing to risk failure. To risk the possibility that you may fall short of what you’re trying.

Choosing to say yes to one thing is choosing to say no to another thing. They're connected.

You’ve to to reach a place in your life where you’re willing to do whatever it takes to realize your dreams.

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a lifelong learner. I am a firm believer in the fact that you should always be learning.

And I know of no greater source of wisdom than the Proverbs. Even if you’re not religious, the Proverbs are loaded with wisdom for everyday life. There are 31 of them, so every day, I read that day’s corresponding Proverb.

In the pursuit of wisdom, here are 6 lessons on how to truly grow in wisdom every single day.

W: Write it down for your future self.

What you’re learning today may not be directly applicable to your current situation, but one day, it will be. One day, you will need that knowledge.

If you learn how to learn today, you will always be ready to learn, and you will have a fountain of knowledge to draw from.

I: Intentionally ask questions.

In every single situation you’re in, wherever you are, ask questions. Be curious and try to figure out the “why.” Let curiosity drive you to always seek to understand why things are they way that they are.

S: See it from a different perspective.

When you find yourself saying, “I just can’t see how someone could ____,” ask yourself how would someone else see it. Play the devil’s advocate.

Even if it doesn’t change your opinion, and it likely won’t, it will help you to get a better grasp on why it is that you believe the thing that you believe.

Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

D: Don’t assume that you know it all.

Remember that you aren’t the smartest person in the world. Other people have learned and experienced things that you can’t fathom, so let them teach you.

By being humble, you are allowing yourself to be placed in a position where you can constantly grow and learn and be taught.

O: Opportunity is everywhere.

If you don’t hear opportunity knocking, it’s not because it’s not there, it’s because you've not built any doors for it to knock on.

Most people only see the obvious opportunities, while wise people see opportunity everywhere.

M: Make gratitude your attitude.

Let your default position be one of thanks, of trustworthiness, of assuming best intentions, and of positivity.

The wisest people have the best, richest, fullest lives. Because they recognize that life is happening for them and not to them.

One of my buddies talks about the chicken line as the place in your life where, at a certain point, you become a chicken about stuff.

Maybe you would jump off a 10 foot cliff into the water, but at 20 feet you draw the line. That’s your chicken line.

There’s nothing wrong with having a chicken line. We all have them. The thing we need to make sure of is that our chicken lines are in the right place.

When our chicken lines are too low, sometimes, we miss out on what life has to offer us. Sometimes, we need to work on moving that chicken line out just a little bit further, so that we don’t miss out.

Tim Ferriss talks about how usually, the thing we most need to do is the thing that we fear the most. In other words, the majority of the effort that you put into self-improvement needs to come from your fears.

Where are you afraid? Is it being vulnerable in relationships? Is it taking that leap in your career? Or settling down and starting that family? Maybe you need to move your chicken line.

Whatever area of your life that you want to grow in is going to require you to adjust that chicken line. To grow, you’re going to have to go to a place that you’ve never gone before.

Again, chicken lines aren’t bad. It would be harmful if we just got rid of them all together. When they’re all out of whack, they look like fear. But when they are fine tuned, they look like healthy boundaries, set by someone who knows what they want and where they are going.

You know those times in life when it seems like something is impossible? When you can’t possibly get over that obstacle that’s standing in your way?

Commander Mark Divine talks about not flinching in the face of the impossible.

Last year I ran the Spartan race. If you don't know what the Spartan race is, it’s basically a gigantic obstacle course with a 5k thrown in for good measure.

At one point, there was a rope climb. I have no experience climbing ropes.

As I stood there and stared up at the rope, I realized that no matter how long I looked at the rope, no matter how much I tried to psych myself up, that rope climb was never going to get any more possible for me than it was at that moment.

So I relied on the one thing I knew I had going for me. My upper body strength. I attacked that rope as if it were possible, and before I knew it, I was at the top, ringing the bell. I had conquered it. Because I didn’t flinch in the face of the impossible.

Where are you flinching? What is it in your life that seems impossible? Maybe it’s a conversation that you know you need to have. Maybe it’s a decision you know you need to make. Whatever it is, know that flinching is only going to delay the discomfort.

Leaning into the impossible is what will get you through to the other side.

On the day I am recording this podcast, it is Loving day. If you’re not familiar with Loving day, it’s the anniversary of the day that the Supreme Court struck down laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the United States. Behind that court case were Mildred & Richard Loving, an interracial couple from Virginia who never flinched in the face of the impossible and changed the world with their refusal to back down. They made the impossible possible.

If they can stand unflinching in the face of the impossible, surely we can as well.

We were chatting about life and careers and work, and he told me a story of when he was a little boy. His dad would send him out to work the farm during the day, then at lunch time, would give him chores to do during his “break.”

It got me thinking about the value of rest, and how a lot of folks tend to have a skewed view of what rest actually is.

There’s no secret to success. You want to be successful? You be the first person your boss sess in the morning and the last person your boss sess in the afternoon.

You find out what your boss is reading and what they’re into, and you read and care about those things.

While you wait, work. Waiting is an active thing, it’s not passive. So many people in this hustle culture are down on time off, or vacation, or rest, because they have a flawed idea of what rest really is.

Rest is not being lazy. Rest is not doing nothing. Rest is doing things that refuel and recharge you, and often times those things are active and take work.

Think of it this way: eventually, your car has to refuel. So you pull into a station and fill up. Technically your car is sitting, but there is still activity happening in order to refuel that car. There's something happening to get that fuel from the pump to your tank

While we rest and wait, we are pausing one aspect of our movement so that we can do something else to put the fuel back in so that we can move forward.

While you wait, work.

Just because the season comes on the calendar, doesn’t mean you’ll be ready for that season. It’s very easy to put something on the calendar, but it’s also easy for that thing to come and you not be ready for it because you haven't’ been preparing or refueling adequately.

So by all means, unplug. Take PTO. Leave the office and turn off the laptop. But if we don't do something to actually refuel, we are never going to feel truly rested, and we are never going to be ready for what’s to come.

And to some extent, that’s absolutely true. But I think that we need to put a caveat on this saying.

Yes, it is better to give than to receive, but you cannot give unless you have received. You cannot give unless you’ve been given to.

The reality is, receiving help and gifts and wisdom is not something that a lot of us are very good at. What happens is that a lot of people give and give and give and then up completely burned out because they’re giving everything they have and not being filled up at all.

Yes, it is good to give, but we can’t give if we don’t receive.

Be filled up.

If you’re at a place where you need to receive, don't’ be afraid of it. Much like a cup that is full, receiving doesn’t hinder your giving, it enables it.